My Love Is Up, Out of Sight, Around the Corner

St. Patrick's day grew more important in 1951. A bright new shamrock, a four-leaf clover of human variety came to earth. Shelley Jean Parker. Tall and slender, with four unique compound leaves instead of the usual three. Intellect, compassion, faith, and patience. Green and vital. We know people cheered her arrival, especially her parents, Irene and Robert. They knew she was exceptional. On the other hand, we believe a pre-mortal group wept over her farewell from them. Among those were surely future siblings, Chris, Norman, and Joy. And children to be, Amy, Mike, Kiele, and Brent.

 

But Shelley, she always hoped and believed that going around another bend in a trail and forging ahead would be one more of many successful farewells in an eternal life. Progress means moving on down the trail. Or up it. Leaving some you love behind to go ahead. Even if it's steep.

 

Now today is another farewell. We lament Shelley's loss here, we mortals, but yonder, her entrance is surely being celebrated. We think her parents, grandparents, and legions of brothers and sisters of Heavenly Parents welcome her to  new terrain to forge her pathway.

 

In a sense, less is more. She's departed, but not gone. She's on her way to help fashion the way for us to follow.

 

Let us pause to consider Shelley's growth on the track she trod here.

 

Welcomed as a first child, she quickly became vibrant. Blessed, soon baptized, she loved to play and pretend in sagebrush hills across from home in Roy. Characteristic of her, in 1961, she received a certificate of 100 percent attendance in primary at Lake View Ward. In '63, she graduated from primary, and, in public school, moved from Lakeview Elementary to Roy Junior High. She won a Cappy Dick coloring contest, getting her photograph and an article about her in the Ogden Standard Examiner. She received a home library, including a 15-volume set of Childcraft and a 20-volume set of encyclopedias. She won them and used them.

 

That year her family moved from Roy to East Layton to a new home on a wooded acre of scrub oak at the base of Thurston Peak. A whole mountain range to explore. She climbed that range and many others, forging ahead. Even with rattle snakes and flies and squawking birds. There's a letter from Primary Children's Hospital way back then, thanking her for her gift of stuffed animals for ill children. "May you always have this spirit of love and giving in your heart," it says. She did.

 

In '66, she said farewell to Central Davis Junior High and became a Davis High Dart, where she consistently bulls-eyed the high honor roll and walked on.

 

Along the way, her family cared for foster children. She helped out. Eventually, she received new siblings: first Chris --- dear Chris, she would always say, although Chris flinched at it --- then Joy, and, finally, Norman. She loved them, helped care for them, lead them along.

 

Bees visit clover. So she celebrated the spirit of the hive, busy having faith, seeking knowledge, safeguarding health, honoring womanhood, understanding beauty, valuing work, loving truth, tasting sweetness in service, and feeling joy. The myriad individual awards she earned mark how well she seized each opportunity for progress as she hiked along. High school, seminary graduation, and on to college.

 

Her family traveled. In 1951, to Martinez, California to visit Uncle Dan and Aunt Jean and family. In '52, to Cardston to the temple and to Glacier National Park. In '53 to Colorado and Southern Utah. In '54 to Concord, California on Easter. In '55 to Montana, to Sun Valley, and McCall. In '56 to New York and the eastern states, then on to Detroit via train to get a new car. Well, you get the picture. And each year she went further along her trail, literally, figuratively, spiritually. She gained insights and understanding and compassion.

 

In '69, hiking along as a freshman in college Shelley met this tall, gangly redhead, a boy known then as Wally --- now Walt. They were walking the same route. In August, 1971 they married in Salt Lake in the Temple. Two years later, in January, '73, Amy was born. By then, Shelley and Wally, mostly working full-time, had also completed requirements for bachelors' degrees. Speaking of a rocky path, they both started work as civil servants for the dreaded IRS. They planned to instead trek a path to international business school, but with a tight budget after graduating, they interviewed for jobs on the different path. Brooklyn, Chicago, Miami, Cleveland. "We like you," their interviewers said, but don't know if Utahans would fit in. They trod off to Chicago for training, working in Rockford, Illinois, then Illinois's second largest city.

 

Two years in Rockford auditing taxpayers, serving the Church, raising Amy and trying to grow offshoots. No luck there. Off to California, same goals. Off to Twin Falls, Idaho, where Shelley changed jobs, teaching English part-time at the community college. Still focused on getting more kids, the trail grew steep with switchbacks and a blind canyon. Eventually, Shelley backtracked. If she and Walt couldn't have biological kids, they'd adopt. First Shelley quit work and Michael came along on Walt's 31st birthday. Nice timing, happiest birthday present ever. Then a move to Boise. In 1980, Kiele came from Korea. Shelley flew to Denver to get Kiele. They handed her the baby and told her to take her and change her clothes. Shelley sensed something wrong. A frightening overhang, a cliff of a thousand feet. For one thing, Kiele's head just lulled to one side. In tears, frightened, Shelley returned home with the baby, meeting Walt at the airport. Then Kiele smiled and laughed so endearingly, as she does, and they knew whatever was wrong could be overcome. Another face to clamber up and down. Back home, a doctor said Kiele had cerebral palsy. When a little older, Kiele slowly started to talk, to walk. The doctor prescribed a ct-scan, and Shelley took Kiele. While Kiele lay in an X-ray tunnel, Shelley waited, anxious. One technician said to the other, "Didn't I see her walk in with her mother?" The other nodded and said, "And she talks." The ct-scan showed between 1/3 and 1/2 of the space beneath Kiele's cranium filled with fluid instead of brain. Shelley had a tall peak, an Everest to climb.

 

In 1982, six-month-old Brent came from Korea on Christmas Eve to the Portland airport. Nicest gift Shelley said she ever got for Christmas. By '85, Shelley was back to work for the dreaded IRS. One morning getting ready, she said she had a sore neck and asked Walt to look at it. A lump. Subsequently, doctors diagnosed an advanced form of lymphoid cancer, Hodgkin's disease. Shelley faced a new path up a Himalayan mountain. Shelley started chemotherapy, and they arranged to move back to Utah, close to family. She underwent chemo on Fridays, throwing up all weekend and returning to work early the next week until she couldn't physically tolerate that any longer. Then radiation, usually, daily after work.  She climbed those mountains.

 

Shelley's own crop of little clover --- Amy, Mike, Kiele, and Brent --- all kept on growing and advancing down their own trodden tracks, as children do, sometimes making pathways bright, sometimes, dark and rocky. Shelley was always there for them. Now Amy and her husband, Steven, also have little ones, Hannah and Piper, and Shelley kept journals of their young lives to help them remember the years she was there. Well, Hannah and Piper are not so little any more. But all the time, Shelley kept walking out ahead, always leading the way with her four leaves of intellect, compassion, faith, and patience. Now she's around the bend, out of sight, but never out of our minds and hearts. We will follow her.

 

Shelley loved to read, to hike, to quilt. She loved to travel and to have a dog. Give her a trail and she was off, going on down it or up it. As long as it had a bend, she wanted to go around to see what lay ahead. She always tried to follow the Lord's way, to live by the golden rule. She loved and cared for her family and friends. She loved the Lord; said she'd follow Him in faith.

 

People say, "Rest in peace, dear one." While Shelley's blessed body, tired and worn out by trails and trials of life may rest later this day in a grave, you can trust that she's still on a path, up around a bend, out of sight. Maybe now walking with her dad and mother for a spell. Think of all the beautiful vistas she's seen! The sights of wonder, the sounds of majesty! The scrumptious food she's relished! She's smelling the sweet honeysuckle of love and sacrifice as she continues on! May we all remember her path and let it inspire us to follow with as much courage and strength as she had and has. For she follows the path of the Lord, in faith.

 

We love you dear, sweet, shamrock Shelley Jean Parker Eddy. You are a four-leaf clover.

Where is my Mother in Heaven?

I can see a boy or a girl growing up without a mother. I'm sure it happens all the time. I'm not sure how often it happens that there's no woman who could be considered a surrogate mother in a child's life, but I'm pretty sure it's happened before, many times. A father takes over and rears a child or children. Mother is out of the picture entirely. That happens. I'm sure of that. Eventually in such cases I would guess that the child, boy or girl, begins asking, because of the circumstances they see all around them with other children having mothers or substitute mothers like grandmothers or whatnot, what happened to their mother. Did she die? Was there a divorce? Did she leave them? What? Why isn't she around?

That brings me to the subject of religion, specifically the religion I adhere to: Mormonism, or more properly The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I have reached that point in my spiritual rearing that I want the answer to my question: where is my mother in heaven? I'm going to ask the question now and keep asking. There's no doubt in Mormon theology that there is a mother in heaven. This isn't about that question. That's been answered for Mormons. Whereas other religions may not believe that there is a mother in heaven or posit the possibility of there being a mother in heaven, there is no question in Mormonism that there is a mother in heaven who is married to a father in heaven. Plenty of other Mormon scholars and administrators, including Mormon prophets, seers and revelators, have made that clear.

Nobody in Mormonism seems to be asking that question. Why? Because it's probably taboo. Why? Just because. There really is no explanation as to why that is so. Just because. Just because does not cut it for me any longer. I'm going to ask. Do what is right, let the consequences follow.

On the internet site Mormon.org there is a faq that asks the question "Why don't women hold the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?" I believe a journalist in a national television telecast asked him that question. The Mormon intranet site has the additional question, "How do Mormon women lead in the Church?" It quotes then President of the church, Gordon B. Hinckley,

Women do not hold the priesthood because the Lord has put it that way. It is part of His program. Women have a very prominent place in this Church. They have their own organization. It was started in eighteen forty-two by the Prophet Joseph Smith, called the Relief Society, because it's initial purpose was to administer help to those in need. It has grown to be, I think, the largest women's organization in the world… They have their own offices, their own presidency, their own board. That reaches down to the smallest unit of the Church everywhere in the world…
The men hold the priesthood, yes. But my wife is my companion. In this Church the man neither walks ahead of his wife nor behind his wife but at her side. They are co-equals in this life in a great enterprise.

If God has a wife, which Mormonism teaches He does, isn't it logical to conclude, as Gordon B Hinckley said of his companion, his wife, that God does not walk ahead of His wife but at Her side, as co-equals? So in all of the religion where is She? That is my project.

Low-lying branches over the sidewalk

Haven't talked about Asia for a few days. The dog, not the continent.

Haven't talked about anything for a few days, Asia, the continent, dog, or otherwise.

Walking. That's what we do, Asia and I, and here I'm talking about the dog. She is rather insistent, quite a bitch --- that's what you call female dogs --- and it's probably a good thing, or I wouldn't get much exercise, not that the strolls I do with her around the neighborhood are likely that beneficial to my health. They seem to keep Asia's spirits up, however, and perhaps they aid in my attitude and demeanor somewhat. But measurements of what might or might not be helpful to me are subjective and relative. On the other hand, I think the statistics indicate that some walking, even if it's in the classification of lumbering, is better than none at all.

Anyway, we do walk, or lumber, and even some of it is uphill. And a lot of the time we stop while Asia sniffs, pees, poops, or eats grass. Oh, and the other day --- well, just yesterday, Wednesday --- she saw three does walking across the road right in front of us. One was pretty big and the other two were smaller, younger, I guess. I wouldn't have noticed them at all if she'd remained quiet because I had my Kindle with me and was reading the book for our reading group, but Asia barked, forcefully and succinctly, twice, and tugged vigorously on the harness so that I looked up.

It, the walking or lumbering, not the deer viewing, helps me slumber better, maybe. I think it does. Well, maybe seeing the deer helps some.

We had a big snowstorm the other day.

It left the tree branches laden with the heavy snow of the first storm of the season. Now I don't really care if the branches are laden with the heavy snow, other than the fact that it breaks a few of the neighborhood tree branches, and that creates some work for some of my neighbors and causes them consternation and work.

What does end up irking me are the branches that hang over the sidewalk so low you can't get under them. If you proceed and try to slink under them, you're liable to get dumped on by a big load of snow if you touch any of the branches whatsoever. It can be like an avalanche. Why can't people just cut off the tree branches at a reasonable height above the sidewalk so that we can walk easily down the way? Lumbering. With their dogs. Of course, there will always be those who don't get their sidewalks shoveled, too, but the low-lying branches above the sidewalks are very irksome.

There's a Test?

It's tempting to say I read THE PSYCHOPATH TEST: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE MADNESS INDUSTRY because it's the political season --- It's mid-October 2012 --- and the election is in a few weeks. There's Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and whatnot. Or maybe because Halloween is just around the corner is the reason. Or because I've got somebody in my neighborhood in mind to evaluate. Or, actually, several.

None of that's true, however. I read this because the author, Jon Ronson, was on NPR --- Was it Diane Rehm or Radio West with Doug Fabrizio? I don't know. He was engaging. Is so engaging. So I bought my Kindle version of the book and read a lot of it while walking our greyhound around the neighborhood.

I know, I know, I risk others evaluating me as a psychopath in doing that, especially as I scoop up after the dog's leavings with plastic bags while I'm messing with my Kindle. And anyway the neighbors who see me don't have the checklist they need to evaluate me properly. So they probably do think I am a psychopath, but it's another disorder I have altogether. For they probably haven't read the book and don't have the knowledge that's in it. I now have and possess "the list" to administer the psychopath test. :-).

This book, however, makes it plain that "the list" is not all you need. In fact, it makes very clear how very addictive labeling people is. We do it, but we don't necessarily do it well. I recommend you read this book, especially if you're interested in the topic. As I mentioned before, the author is very engaging. You'll follow Mr. Ronson around continents ferreting out prospects to complete his research. Convicted murderers, psychiatrists, history buffs, etc. You won't be disappointed in the narrative. "'As a group they tend to be more charming than most people,'" says Martha Stout, from the Harvard Medical School.

Not that I should know.

In the Swirl

With the name Eddy, perhaps you can imagine why I got interested in being adrift. You know, swirling around, unanchored, etc.

Anyway, I read BOYS ADRIFT recently, after my brother-in-law finished it. He seemed to like it, thought it had direct application.

My boys are grown up and men now. That doesn't necessarily mean they're totally moored, but it does mean the responsibility, even any deleterious consequences to themselves and others therefrom if they're not, has more or less shifted entirely to them. Nonetheless, my interest in boys doing well hasn't completely waned. Furthermore, I'm not above fussing over what I might have done better myself, even though it's too late.

I come to reviewing Sax's book late in the game. There are numerous comprehensive and valuable reviews out there. I won't add anything by being effusive. I will say this. The dynamic, the environment, the context in which children are raised today is much different than it was when I raised our four children, three of which were adopted, two of which were boys. BOYS ADRIFT deals with this new environment that differs significantly from the era they grew up in. From what I can tell, the book does a fairly good job. I enjoyed reading it and contemplating its suggestions and assertions.

If I were to make a recommendation, I would suggest that anyone reading this book read one in counterpoint to this one. One thing that seemed to escape me in my reading was a recognition in its narration that all characteristics of humanity, including those of boys, exist on a continuum. The fixes articulated won't work for everyone.

Recycling Plastic Bags

I haven't written anything about Asia lately.

It's not like she's gone anywhere — the dog, that is, not the continent. Or that we haven't every day been taking walks as usual, mornings and afternoons. We have to go earlier in the afternoon now because the sun is going down shortly after we eat supper. Of course, it also gets light later and later, but we always left so late that hasn't become a problem.

We went out this morning, and I don't remember any of the particulars except that I was reading THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES because that's the book for book club this month.

I take my Kindle, attaching earphones to it, then listening to it read to me as we walk along. I have it read to me as fast as it can. I can get some serious reading done that I wouldn't otherwise get done doing so.

It can be logistically a little more difficult. If interruptions come up — Asia is engaged by another dog, a cat, a teasing magpie or I run into someone who wants to talk — I simply pause the Kindle from its recitation of the text. If Asia dumps a load I pause the Kindle, disconnect it from the earphones, which I leave in my ears, and set the Kindle on the ground. I reach in my pocket, take out a plastic bag and use it to pick up the dump, take out another plastic bag and put the first inside to make carrying the first plastic bag with the load more palatable. Note that I said more palatable, not palatable. I guess I shouldn't use palatable at all. Anyway.

This evening we went a little bit earlier because I had a later agenda: watch the vice presidential debate. We went left, not right, out of the house, down past the Shepards (I'm not sure if that's correct spelling), around the bend, down past Thurstons, right at the corner where the Nelsons live, and down the way until the first cul-de-sac. We usually pass right by the cul-de-sac, but today Asia was quite insistent we turn up and walk through it. I was passive, since I was engaged in events happening on the moor in my book. On the way out of the cul-de-sac, we had to stop and talk to the Willies (again, spelling?), Scott, in particular. He's adding a doorway and stairs down to his basement to accommodate an apartment down there, to supplement their income. Things have become tight for them, he says. He made a remark about my pension from the government.

Further along, we ran into one of our typical stops, especially in good weather: the Wilsons. Mike and Judith were sitting, as usual, in front of the garage, but tonight Clyde Robbins was sitting there with them. They told me they had all been enjoying the week in Southern Utah, at Lake Powell.


Judith asked if I was going to watch the debates. I asked her what debates, joking. I said I like to watch the debates, but I like to watch the commentaries on the debates better.


Asia got tired of the discussion and pulled me on.

Before we knew it we were back home. Asia hadn't made a dump, and I hadn't had to use any plastic bags.

I'm not sure what my mother would think about the sacrifices I make, or rather, what my mothers would think.

Charisma

So tonight we were almost home and this lady who jogs in the evening around the neighborhood with her husband riding bike by her side came right over to Asia to give the greyhound some attention and to get some.

That never happens to me. In my entire lifetime, I don't think it's ever happened.

It probably never happens to that guy on the bike either.

But it happens to Asia. Often. Not just with women, but with men, teenagers, children, and even toddlers. Even other dogs seem to like her. I've seen cats stop and stare, like they couldn't get their eyes full of her, mesmerized. The dog has that kind of charisma.

Is there any wonder why I am writing about her? I need to study her and glean from her some charm.

However, I'll never look as good, as lean, as sleek as she does. That isn't going to happen.

The feminine mystique. She has it.

I'm guessing my mother in heaven does too.